By Chief Seattle 1854

"This we know - the earth does not
belong to man, man belongs to
the earth. All things are connected
like the blood that unites one
family whatever befalls the earth
befalls the son of the earth. Man
did not weave the web of life, he
is merely a strand of it. Whatever
he does to the web he does to
himself."

The Jewelled Cover Of Night

The jewelled cover of night
Defeats oppression;
The mind in sleeps' arms
Lives the subconscious,
Where "Stars shine on revolutions"
And no prophecies freeze

Such prophecies freeze
When a frosted sun
Awakes reality's silence
Time to get up
and conform.

(October 1977)

ANOTHER LOST SHOE

With two glass slippers
Cinderella feels fine,
The star of the Ball
Sipping fizzy white wine,
Waltzing with the prince
Beneath chandeliers,
Filling her future
With grand ideas.

The clock strikes twelve,
Its all too late.
She bolts, trips and limps
Through the palace gate.
Her riches turn to rags
And unrequited desire
As she hails a passing
'Pumpkin For Hire'.

A man in livery
Knocks at her door
And shatters her shoe
On the kitchen floor.
With dustpan and brush
She sweeps it clean
Of every shard
And smithereen.

Unbuttoned by Buttons,
Her purity eschewed
In lusty pursuance
Of the exotically lewd.
So happily ever after
The couple settle
And have two children
Called Hansel and Gretel.

The Fairy Godmother
Is most dumfounded
To have her magic
So confounded.
Swapping wand for cauldron
And wings for switch,
She turns herself
Into a witch.

(27th October 1999)

For She Who Never Spoke

(AN ANCESTRESS OF MINE)

April was her name
Felicity would hide
For April came
Where two selves divide.
At Felicity's birth
April manifest.
Felicity,'though christened,
Was by April possessed.
Besides this shame
Felicity was pure,
Completely at odds
With April's fissure;
A crevice, a canyon,
A rock fault so deep
Its incongruous uprush
Put the faller to sleep
And of her imposter
Unable to tell
Each time the ground opened
And Felicity fell.
Daughter of contortion,
An asphyxia begun,
Born to a parson
In eighteen-sixty-one.
A child of ringlets,
Smock and lace,
Painfully timid
and fair of face.
Dreams disallowed
She could not yearn,
Deductions forbidden
She could not learn
unless by rote
An obedience was formed
To keep imaginations
From ever being spawned.
And so came April
This folly to displace,
Igniting in Felicity
All manner of disgrace.
She tore at her clothes,
She tangled her hair,
She showed her this "Other"
Her own to declare
Had she not disappeared
Unaware she was host
To April, her "other"
Her inseperable ghost
Who stalked her childhood
Intermittently defined,
Timidity and purpose
Imperfectly aligned.
Her riddles the secrets
Of a silenced sphinx,
Her vision precise
As the famished lynx,
A hunter determined
Continually prowling
Then eerily poised
Afore the pouncing
Upon the pain
Of a disnamed child;
The true Felicity
Suspended and styled
So passed to April
Whence naught could extract
From this mute maid's
Enigma intact.
Twelve long years
The haunting occured
And then an asylum
Patiently preferred.
The noting of symptoms,
The parson's sad tale,
The arranging for residency
Should all else fail.
He wanted her out,
He could not abide,
This "other", the stranger
The daughter beside.

The demon, April,
Duly lured,
Shamefully dismembered
And Felicity Cured

Of fury.

Subdued, subtracted,
Anonymous pain.
The bland, empty life
Of the certified sane.
But truth is immortal
And April will not die
While its silent growth
Erodes the lie.

How long?

Ten thousand days
And one hundred years
She burrows her sedition
Through progeny of hers.
In daughters of daughters
April, is known,
In her great silence
These words were sown

By April, called Felicity,
An Ancestress of mine.

(November 1992)

Prayer To Gaea

Reared in ignorance
I have walked many paths
To your ruin

Hewn in arrogance
I fear the piety
Of this prayer

Possess me.

(October 1989)